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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2002-12 > 1040533249


From: "Steven C. Perkins" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Steve Olson Article
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 00:01:09 -0500
In-Reply-To: <7b.53d309f.2b3637fa@aol.com>


Ann and Paul :

It may help in this to recall my situation. In the U of Arizona Recent
Ethnic Origins Database, my only exact 25/25 matches are 2 from
Iceland, 1 from England (a cousin), 2 from Norway, and 1 12/12 from
Czekoslovakia (where ever that is now), but my 1 and 2 step
differences are predominately Central and Far East Asian, Indian and
Sri Lankan, and Inuit (Eskimo). In one of the other Y databases I have
one exact match with a Native American and 1 European American.
So from that, yes, many people are related by this haplotype. Perhaps
and extreme example that bolsters the mathematical argument.

Regards,

Steven C. Perkins

On 21 Dec 2002 at 16:32, wrote:

Date forwarded: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 14:32:44 -0700
Date sent: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 16:32:42 -0500 (EST)
Forwarded by:
From:
Subject: Re: [DNA] Steve Olson Article
To:
Send reply to:

In a message dated 12/21/02 1:11:56 AM Pacific Standard Time,
writes:

> I fail to comprehend the mathematics of the comment that every European
> may descend from almost everyone who ever lived in Europe before 1400
> .This notwithstanding,my interest is not so much in the claim that one
> may descend from as many as 30 million people before this date, but in
> the supposition that people moved around Europe as much as the writer
> indicates.

Steve Olson has more extensive comments on this in his book
"Mapping Human
History" and in an article "The Royal We" in the Atlantic Monthly May
2002:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/05/olson.htm

He refers to a technical paper by a Yale statistician Joseph Chang:

http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/pubs/Ancestors.pdf

Now I haven't studied all of Chang's arguments and equations, but he
does
mention repeatedly that his model assumes random mating in the
population
(say all of Europe). I agree with you that most marriages take place
within smaller subsets of the total population (whether for geographical
or cultural reasons), so I don't think the assumption holds true.

However, Steve Olson has said that even rare exceptions, when
someone
marries outside the smaller group, would create enough links to the
population at large so that eventually everyone is tied together. I
suppose a computer program could model how much random mating
is required
to accomplish this, but Olson's claims go against my intuition, too!

Ann Turner
GENEALOGY-DNA List Administrator
>http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Miscellaneous/GENEALOGY-
DNA.html
DNA preservation kits: >http://www.dnafiler.com




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